Make a DATE for the Alps Next Ski Season

It's the Summer Solstice. To be precise, that was on Saturday, the longest day of the year, but Breakfast Bytes doesn't appear at weekends. Surprisingly, the earliest sunrise of the year was on June 13, a week ago. And the latest sunset of the year will be on June 27, next weekend. It actually depends on where you are, but the earliest sunrise always occurs before the solstice, and the latest sunset after. But the solstice is still the longest day.

Anyway, today's topic is not the middle of Summer, but next Winter.

Design Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) next year was scheduled to be in March 2021 in Madrid. DATE20 was meant to be in Grenoble but was canceled at the last minute and moved online, and as part of resolving the financial impact, DATE21 was moved to Grenoble, but it had to be moved to the first week of February for the conference center, ALPEXPO, to be available.

If you are a big fan of Madrid, I understand DATE should eventually show up there. As it happens, I've only been to Madrid once in my life when Cadence Europe held their annual FAE training there, and I came over from San Jose as the keynote speaker (I am sure we had an external keynote speaker, too, but it was nearly 20 years ago and I've forgotten who). One of the great opportunities of visiting Madrid is to visit the Museo del Prado, in many ways a much more approachable art museum than many bigger ones, such as the Louvre or the Met. Plus, if you have even passing interest in art or history, even if you do nothing else in Madrid then visit the Museo Reina Sofia and see Picasso's Guernica. Many paintings are disappointingly small when you see them (hey Mona Lisa) but Guernica is 25 feet across and 11 feet high. Anyway, that's for another year, maybe 2022.

Grenoble

Grenoble is nestled in a big valley in the Alps and is surrounded by ski areas. Half an hour's drive to the North-East is Crolles, where STMicroelectronics has a big research center and their 300mm fab. STM is actually headquartered in Geneva (in Switzerland but driving distance). It also has a major operation at Agrate (Milan) since STM was actually a merger of French Thomson Semiconducteurs and Italian SGS (Società Generale Semiconduttori). When I heard about the 1987 merger, I thought it was unlikely to succeed. That just goes to show how much I know, since in 2019 it was the 12th biggest semiconductor company in the world, just ahead of its European-based competitors Infineon (spun out of Siemens) and NXP (spun out of Philips).

There are many other technology-related organizations in Grenoble and the surrounding area, most significantly for the semiconductor industry Leti (offiically CEA-Leti Laboratoire d'électronique des technologies de l'information). There are also research laboratories from CNRS, INRIA, and others. Grenoble has several universities, most notably INP (Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble) and UGA (Université Grenoble Alpes).

I'm afraid there are no world-class art museums in Grenoble. But the town is in the Alps and there is world-class skiing and snowboarding to be found. And we are talking about the first week of February. Grenoble was the site of the 1968 Winter Olympics. Local (Val d'Isère) hero Jean-Claude Killy swept the board and won all the men's downhill skiing gold medals (downhill, slalom, and giant slalom). One of the nearby ski areas is Alpe d'Huez, probably more famous to cyclists than skiers since the road to the resort is regularly used as one of the steepest climbs of the Tour de France (average grade over 8%).

By the way, there is a Grenoble Airport. But don't go there since it has limited flights, and is connected to the town by a winding country road, so will take 45 minutes driving (there is no train). Much more sensible is to fly to Lyon airport. When I lived in France this was called Lyon Satelas (after the town where the airport was located) but it was renamed in 2000 to Lyon–Saint Exupéry Airport. Antoine de Saint Exupéry was a native of Lyonnais, an aviation pioneer, and an author, most notably of Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince). From the airport, the TGV line from Paris goes through the airport and terminates in Grenoble; it takes just over one hour (or you can drive along the Autoroute in about the same time). Grenoble is also about one and a half hours from Geneva Airport.

Let me give you the summary of the event from the DATE website:

The five-day event consists of a conference with plenary invited papers, regular papers, panels, hot-topic sessions, tutorials, workshops, special focus days and a track for executives. The scientific conference is complemented by a commercial exhibition showing the state-of-the-art in design and test tools, methodologies, IP and design services, reconfigurable and other hardware platforms, embedded software and (industrial) design experiences from different application domains, such as automotive, wireless, telecom and multimedia applications. The organisation of user group meetings, fringe meetings, a university booth, a PhD forum, vendor presentations and social events offers a wide variety of extra opportunities to meet and exchange information on relevant issues for the design automation, design and test communities. Special space will also be allocated for EU-funded projects to show their results.

Why Am I Telling You This?

It's my job. As part of the move to raise DATE's profile, especially with semiconductor and EDA companies, I am DATE21's press guy. Although being an academic conference, I'm officially the Publicity Chair. It's really too early to do any real publicity. But I have a blog so I thought I'd at least give advance notice of the change of dates, the change of venue, and encourage you to think of attending early next year.

Of course, we don't yet know what the travel and gathering rules and restrictions will be in February of next year. The plan is for DATE21 to be live, with some Interactive Presentations (confusingly called IP, given that the conference covers semiconductor IP, too).

Date for a DATE

The conference itself starts on February 1, 2021 (which is Monday) and runs through Friday, February 5. It will be at the Grenoble ALPEXPO Conference Center.

The call for papers is open. All papers have to be submitted electronically by Monday, September 14, 2020, as abstracts and by Monday, September 21, 2020 as full papers. The Program Committee also encourages proposals for Special Sessions, Tutorials, Friday Workshops, University Booth Demonstrations, PhD Forum, and presentations in the Exhibition Theatre. Acceptances will be communicated, and registration will open, somewhere in mid-November.

All the details currently available are on the DATE website. That includes how to contact DATE or submit papers. You can also sign up for the DATE newsletter to stay up to date as things change.

If you are press, we will give you a free pass. There is a special press page. Or contact me directly.

 

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